


Ephemera (Into the Spiral)

by tempus_teapot (dreadnot)



Series: Volutions [11]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M, volutions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 07:09:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 15,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/280202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadnot/pseuds/tempus_teapot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of Volutions-verse ficlets written in response to various prompts. Missing and/or interstitial scenes from various points in the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Closing the Distance

**Author's Note:**

> **The prompt:** In the Volutions verse every instance of Anders/Fenris cuddling has come naturally during from plot. Perhaps one or both of them secretly angling for more without ‘needing’ it for a sad reason?
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place between [Haspenald](http://archiveofourown.org/works/252414) and [Anaxiphilia](http://archiveofourown.org/works/254199).

Ocean currents made the trip from Amaranthine to Kirkwall pass much more quickly than the trip in the opposite direction. Fenris felt as though the City of Chains was pulling them back into its influence. This ship, the _Fair Wind_ , was not as congenial as the _Silverite Maiden_ had been, but that suited both Fenris and Anders after their sojourn to Ferelden.

Anders leaned at the railing. According to him, the seasickness was easier to bear when he could keep his eyes on the horizon and fresh air on his face.

After weeks chained together, it felt natural to lean on the railing at Anders’ right side, almost close enough to touch.

“The captain says Kirkwall is only hours away.”

Anders shrugged and kept his gaze fixed on some distant point, giving Fenris all the permission he needed to trace the line of Anders’ jaw with his eyes. Memory outlined the differences between the man the mage had grown into and the softer youth he had once been – not just the stubble that graced his skin within hours of one of Anders’ cursory attempts at shaving, but the way that the bone stood out more sharply under the skin, drawing angles where there had once been softer curves.

If he let his mind wander, he might think of feeling the coarse hairs under his lips, might think of acting on the things he told Anders he would do, might…

A hard swell lifted the ship and dropped it into a trough on the other side. Fenris balanced easily, but Anders stumbled against him.

Fenris caught him before he could fall, holding to the railing with one hand and the mage with the other. The world did not stop for them, but Anders let his weight rest in Fenris’ hold for a beat longer than necessary.

“I….” Anders’ tongue darted over his lower lip before he straightened and took hold of the railing for himself. “…thank you.”

Fenris slowly released him, but when they both went back to watching the horizon, the careful distance between them had disappeared, and every time the ship rose and fell with the waves, Anders’ weight pressed just a little harder against Fenris’ side.


	2. Lateral Thinking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Anders makes Fenris go fishing.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** During the latter portion of [Grotesquerie](http://archiveofourown.org/works/214344) as they escape the Deep Roads.

“Pfaugh.”

“Oh stop being such a baby about it.”

Anders balanced with help from his staff as he tugged off his boots and rolled up his trouser legs.

Fenris split his glower equally between the mage and the water that flowed beside them.

The subterranean stream widened in this part of the tunnel where it had carved a channel through rock. The water slowed and calmed, providing a safer haven for the eerie, sightless, colorless fish that lived in the Deep Roads’ lightless waters.

“We’ll make it a contest,” Anders said before he waded into the water with a wince and hiss at the bone-chilling cold that made his legs ache almost immediately. “Whoever catches the most fish wins. Loser has to clean them.”

Fenris’ expression twisted with disgust before he stripped off his gauntlets and set them aside at the water’s edge with his sword. Keeping four Grey Wardens, two elves, and two mabari fed for days in the Deep Roads was no mean feat, and Dal made it amply clear that everyone was expected to contribute.

“Come on in, the water’s fine,” Anders lied through gritted teeth while he edged his way carefully along the pool, staff lit with magic and held high to show fish darting in the crystalline water.

Fenris spat into the water and stepped close enough that water lapped at his toes. “How do you propose I catch these fish?”

Anders grinned. “That’s not my problem, is it? Are you in or out?”

Fenris had lived on the run, learned from Fog Warriors, hunted with Hawke, and been trained as a killer. Surely he could do better than one bedraggled mage.

He nodded once and stepped into the water in time to feel it conduct a shuddering whump of magic.

Around them, stunned fish floated to the surface while a smirking Anders scooped them up in his hands and tossed them onto dry ground.

“That’ll do,” Anders said, tossing another fish onto the shore. “It’s not exactly what the Circle has in mind when they teach young mages the mind blast, but it works a treat. Never have to deal with fleas or rats in inn rooms either.”

Fenris glared and retreated to dry land, already taking the knife from his belt. Now that they were separated, it was almost tempting to use it on the mage instead of the fish.

Except that between the fish and the mage, he honestly preferred the mage.

“Pfaugh,” he repeated and got down to the business of gutting fish.


	3. Unexpected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** The day Fenris learned Anders could bake. Also known as the day Anders showed Fenris the joys of eating pie. (apple pie? y/y/maybe?)
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place between [Cingulomania](http://archiveofourown.org/works/276978) and Latibule.

“What are you doing?”

Fenris stood in the doorway watching Anders, flour-smudged and coatless, bustle around Hawke’s kitchen as though he owned the place. Ser Pouce-a-lot lounged on the floor in front of the oven, and Anders stepped over him time and again without once complaining that the cat was going to trip and kill him one of these times.

Anders froze in the act of pouring milk into a bucket that had a crank and handle on the top, a guilty look flitting across his face before he cracked a smile.

“I’m cooking, what does it look like?”

It looked like a disaster. Wads of flat dough stuck to the countertop, and in one case, hung from the bottom of a cabinet. Flour dusted every surface, including Anders, but strangely not the cat. Apple peels and cores littered the countertop, and Hawke’s prized honey jar lay tipped on its side, mostly empty.

But…

But.

The kitchen smelled delightful. It was warm on a cold day, it smelled of spices and sweets, and Anders, for a wonder, looked happy.

Fenris shook his head. “It looks like you’re making a mess.”

“I’ll clean it up.” Anders finished pouring and added a fine black powder to the bucket. “But you’re just in time to help.”

“Why would I help you clean up your mess?” A question he had asked himself countless times when it came to the mage.

“Not clean up,” Anders said, waving away the question. “I just need you to turn this crank. I already have one batch done, but I wanted to make more to be sure everyone else gets some too.”

His tone turned wheedling. “I’ll let you have some if you do.”

Reluctantly Fenris left his place in the doorway to come closer. “What is this?”

“Something Dal and I worked out,” Anders said. “You just turn this to keep the milk and cream from freezing solid, and before you know it, you’ll have something delicious to go with the pie that’s about to come out of the oven.”

Anders rolled his eyes when Fenris hesitated upon hearing it was something two mages had worked out together. “There is no magic used on the ice cream itself. Just do it, Fenris. You’ll thank me for it.”

Fenris glanced around to ensure that no one saw him following Anders’ instructions and took the crank handle when Anders indicated.

“Now you just turn that until I say stop.”

Fenris tried to quell his snarl when Anders put his hands on the outside of the bucket and he felt the tingling rush of magic through his brands and in the air, but he turned the crank, watching wooden paddles turn inside the bucket as the milk mixture began to solidify.

Anders took his hands away and smiled. “There, that wasn’t so bad was it? I’ll just do that a time or two more and it will be ready.”

He left Fenris to his work while he opened the oven, releasing a waft of the delicious scent that had drawn Fenris into the kitchen in the first place.

Before Fenris knew it, there were two pies sitting on the counter within smelling distance.

“You can cook?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“No, Ser Pounce-a-lot did it all,” Anders said, coming over to put his hands on the bucket to release another wave of cold into the contents.

He was close enough to touch, if Fenris wanted. Close enough to kiss, if Fenris wanted. Fenris met his eyes, and he did want, but he was unsure which of them he trusted least.

He dropped his eyes first.

Anders turned away, and Fenris tried not to read anything in the slump of his shoulders while he applied another bit of magic to cool one of the pies just enough to cut. He returned with two slices of pie in two bowls, two small spoons, and one large spoon.

“You can stop turning now.”

He scooped large balls of frozen milk and cream from the bucket and laid them in the bowls with the pieces of pie before he pushed one bowl over the counter to Fenris.

“Just try it. Tell me what you think.”

He took his own bowl and retreated all the way across the kitchen, watching Fenris warily.

Between them Ser Pounce-a-lot gave Fenris another of his too-perceptive stares before he yawned to show Fenris a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

Fenris did not want to like this concoction some mage had just told him to eat – golden pastry, steaming, spiced and warm, with the gleaming white of the frozen milk. How could those things mix? They were too disparate.

The “ice cream” was softening against the pie. He took a bite of the frozen confection first, and it was sweet, subtle in its flavoring of not just milk and cream, but a touch of honey and vanilla. It took a moment to appreciate, but it was worth it. The pie was warm, cinnamon and cloves, the apples soft and comforting as he ate.

Then he mixed the two together and stopped to savor the unexpected melding. What they made together was greater than the sum of its parts and more valuable for its ability to surprise.

Anders must have read some of that off his face, because finally, he smiled again.


	4. Bodyguard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Anders is claustrophobic. Only Fenris realizes it.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place also during [Grotesquerie](http://archiveofourown.org/works/214344) during their escape from the Deep Roads.

Anders was sweating.

Of the five men who shared that tunnel space with him, only one of them seemed to notice. The others went on talking about which path to take, which fork was more likely to lead to darkspawn, which tunnel was more likely to go up than down.

Fenris let the discussion wash over him - he was not a Grey Warden, and he was not as experienced with these tunnels as they. He was also most comfortable in this role regardless - listening, absorbing, and ultimately, following.

Anders was not contributing to the conversation, nor was he listening. He crouched, shoulders hunched, attention turned inward.

Fenris remembered Anders’ words the night before they left Vigil’s Keep for the Deep Roads, _I can feel every single inch of stone overhead just waiting to bury me so deep that even other people’s memories of me will be lost._

Fenris wanted to tell Anders that he would remember him - for good or ill - but who would want the words of a man who could not even remember his own name?

Memory, he thought bitterly, was a liar and a cheat anyway.

Instead he shifted his position to stand beside Anders, looming over him where he crouched as though to tell the stone itself, _to crush him, you must come through me first._


	5. The Taste of Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Fenders in the rain. Fenris smiles.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place between [Nautilus](http://archiveofourown.org/works/198546) and [Grotesquerie](http://archiveofourown.org/works/214344).

Rain lashed the Wounded Coast when Hawke and his companions finally emerged from yet another spider-infested cave with a little more coin in their pockets and a little less blood in their veins. Hawke and Aveline hung back in the shelter of the cave’s entrance, neither of them eager to venture into the downpour.

Anders walked out into the rain without hesitation, turning his face up to the sky to let the rain pelt his skin and wash away the lingering grit and blood from one of Hawke’s “it will be fun!” cavern crawls.

There was work to do, people to see, commitments to be met, but for a moment, Anders just opened his mouth to taste the simple magic of creation in each raindrop. Even Justice’s increasing restlessness stilled for a moment of appreciation for what was a miracle every single time that Anders stood and enjoyed the rain as a free man.

“What are you doing?”

Fenris’ question pulled Anders back to himself. He lowered his head knowing that he looked bedraggled, from his hair plastered to his head and face to the sad feathers that drooped on his shoulders.

He just did not care.

“When I was in the Circle I couldn’t just go outside whenever I wanted, and ‘grounds privileges’ were always cut off when it rained because the templars - bastards - didn’t want to rust. So every time I get rained on, it reminds me that I’m free.”

Fenris considered that logic for so long that Anders assumed he had decided it was stupid and was just standing in the rain to subtly mock the squishy mage.

Then Fenris made a low, contemplative sound and said, “Danarius did not go out in the rain, so I did not go out in the rain.”

After another long pause he tipped his head back to let the rain hit him full in the face. Anders would have sworn that he even saw the corner of Fenris’ mouth turn up in a smile before he opened his mouth to drink the rain.


	6. Furry Godfather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Fenris realizes that cat was not here yesterday. And wait - where did that other cat come from.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place between [Cingulomania](http://archiveofourown.org/works/276978) and [Latibule](http://archiveofourown.org/works/286797).

Every morning since Anders’ night under the influence of Green Giant, Fenris came to Hawke’s estate to escort the mage to his clinic in Darktown. He did not linger, and he only replied tersely to Anders’ attempts at conversation, but every morning he was there.

Every evening he snuffed the light outside the clinic, whether Anders was ready or not, and walked him back to Hawke’s estate, or to the Hanged Man, or up to the market.

And every time he entered Hawke’s home, ostensibly to speak to Hawke, or to ensure that Orana was being treated as an employee and not a slave, or to find some other pretext for his presence than ensuring that some forsaken mage was still alive and well, that cat was there - staring at him from the stairs, or from among Sandal’s tools, or from his favorite perch on the mabari’s back.

That cat’s stare spoke volumes - it welcomed Fenris to its home, it probed, it judged, and sometimes it threatened. That stare said that if something happened to Anders, Fenris would be held accountable.

He shook it off.

It was only a cat. He might be more concerned if it were a mabari, but what did he really have to fear from an average-sized ginger tabby?

One night when Anders wanted to leave the Hanged Man while Fenris was deeply involved in a game of Wicked Grace with Isabela and Varric, he allowed Aveline to escort Anders back to Hawke’s instead. When Fenris made it back to his own home, a black cat waited by the fireplace in his bedroom.

The cat gave him a green-eyed stare before disappearing out one of the broken windows with a flick of its white-tipped tail.

Fenris thought nothing of it, dropping into bed with most of his armor still on.

The next morning, a smoke grey cat watched him with luminous blue eyes as he left to fetch Anders to escort him to the clinic.

More cats. He dismissed it without too much thought. Feral cats were less troublesome than rats in any case.

At Hawke’s estate Anders greeted him with his boots in hand as he hurried past on his way to the kitchen.

“Just need a sandwich. I’ll be right there.”

Ser Pounce-a-lot peered down at him through the upstairs landing’s railing. His eyes were colder than usual before he turned his back to Fenris to display his raised tail, rump, and feline “pride.”

Fenris could not say why, but he was certain that the cat was displeased with him.

As they left the mansion Anders and Fenris passed Ser Pounce-a-lot in Hawke’s back garden, lounging in a patch of sun. A black cat with a white-tipped tail groomed Ser Pounce-a-lot.

Anders beamed and stopped to pet both cats. “Look, Fenris, Ser Pounce-a-lot found a friend!”

Both cats turned luminous eyes up at Fenris, and again Fenris read the message in Ser Pounce-a-lot’s gaze.

_I’m watching you._


	7. Just Don't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** ‘awkward thank-yous’…Maker knows those two can’t just say TA
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place between [Nautilus](http://archiveofourown.org/works/198546) and [Grotesquerie](http://archiveofourown.org/works/214344).

Anders and Fenris left Varric’s suite after a pair of angry Carta dwarves had stormed in to confront him about bribes that were going unpaid. “Sorry to leave you two to each other’s company. Just don’t kill each other,” Varric had said before he had shut the door in their faces.

Fenris’ limp had not been suitably numbed by the liberal internal application of cold ale, but Anders held to his offer to buy the elf a drink. Or five if the situation demanded.

They dropped into a corner table and Anders signaled to Norah for more. After having a blood mage stab him in the head, Justice did not complain too loudly in Anders’ head when he did not water his ale when Norah brought a fresh pitcher.

“Why?” Fenris picked up the thread of the conversation they had been not-having around Varric’s distractions. “Why did you tell me I could leave you down there?”

Anders refilled Fenris’ mug before filling his own. “I was feeling all noble and self-sacrificing. The better question is why you didn’t leave me.”

Fenris raised his mug to his lips and drank until he set it down empty and muffled a belch against his forearm.

Anders waited through the display until Fenris was done before raising his eyebrows pointedly at him. “Well?”

Fenris shrugged a shoulder and reached for the pitcher. “It was a brief lapse of reason. It won’t happen again.”

Anders snorted before taking a long swig of bad ale. “Oh. In that case I don’t have to…”

“What?” Fenris paused in filling his mug to pin Anders with a hard stare. “You don’t have to what?”

The response was muffled when Anders spoke into his mug, leaving Fenris uncertain whether to acknowledge it or not.

“Idon’thavetosaythankyou.”

Fenris snorted and shoved the pitcher back at Anders. “Don’t. Then I won’t have to lie and say you are welcome.”


	8. Bedside Manner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** There is no ~~spoon~~ prompt. I was sick and wanted a bit of fluff for myself.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

“Can you not heal this?”

Anders snuffled miserably before poking his head out of the blankets to give Fenris a bleary, red-eyed glare. “Are you suggesting magic?”

Fenris gingerly picked at the pile of sodden handkerchiefs on the stand next to their bed before deciding the better part of valor was not touching another man’s mucus, no matter what other fluids they might share. “You are the healer. Don’t you know some herbs?”

Anders shoved one hand out from under the blankets and pointed at the teapot and cup nearly lost amidst the clutter of cloth and empty twists of paper with herb residue on them. “Herbs,” he said in his raw rasp. “That’s as good as it gets.”

“Ah.” Fenris shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

The cat scrabbled under the blankets and swam to the surface despite Anders’ feeble protest at losing his heat. Fenris and Ser Pounce-a-lot exchanged looks before he sighed and acknowledged the cat’s point.

Then he left the room.

Anders cursed Fenris under his breath and retreated back under the blankets leaving only his mouth exposed enough to get fresh air. “Stupid elf is probably going to play dice with Zevran,” he grumbled.

Fenris stayed gone long enough for Anders to drop into a light doze, waking when the door opened to admit Fenris carrying a towel-covered tray from the mess hall.

He balanced the tray on the edge of the bedside table to clear away handkerchiefs and herb debris, moving the empty cup onto the tray and setting the teapot on the floor.

While Fenris worked, Anders peeked out from under the blankets, first just revealing his eyes, and then pulling the blankets back enough to show his whole head. “Fenris?”

Fenris uncovered the tray to reveal a fresh teapot and a bowl of steaming soup. “Do you have more of those herbs?”

Anders pushed himself up to a sitting position and leaned over to examine the contents of the tray. “Too soon for more. Did you do this for me?”

Fenris ignored the question and handed Anders a spoon. “For a man whose throat is in such ‘intolerable pain’ you still talk too much.”

He turned away from Anders and unstrapped his sword, hanging it on the hook next to where Anders’ staff stood in the corner. “I traded patrols with Nathaniel. I’ll owe him next Summerday, but he’s off on my three-day loop.”

He left his gauntlets on the table where he always put them next to Anders’ belts and various herbal disorder.

“Eat the soup,” he said with a glare while he removed his armor.

“Did anyone ever tell you that your bedside manner needs work?” Anders set the spoon aside and raised the bowl like a cup.

“You did, the last time you were hurt and I had to tend you.”

Anders slurped noisily from the bowl and watched Fenris’ every movement as he stripped off his leathers next. “This bedside manner is much better.”

For a moment Fenris rewarded him with a fleeting smile before pulling on a pair of loose trousers. “That is the sound of you talking, not drinking your soup.”

Anders slurped noisily and smirked at Fenris over the lip of the bowl when Fenris shot him a glare.

“I’m not coming to bed until you finish that.”

Anders stopped smirking and put more focus into finishing the thick broth until he set the empty bowl aside and Fenris slipped under the blankets with him.

“Will you always do this for me?” Anders asked as rolled onto his side and let Fenris spoon behind him.

“No.” Fenris kissed his shoulder. “Sometimes I will expect you to do it for me.”


	9. Friend Fiction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Friend. Fiction.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Aceldama](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364009%22) and before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

The tattooed elves writhed together on the bed all sinuous limbs and glistening skin. As one they raised their eyes to their lovers and held out their hands in invitation.

“Come to bed,” said the Antivan assassin, beckoning to his dark-skinned lover.

“Come to bed,” echoed the former Tevinter slave, reaching for the apostate he had recently taken to bedding.

_—taken to bedding?—_

_—just wait—_

The two mages eagerly went into the welcoming arms. Soon the room once again echoed with moans and the sounds of men taking their pleasure as the assassin offered himself to his lover and his friends, back arched like some great cat as he thrust the rounded, shapely, globes of his rump—

“Now, Rivaini, rump is only sexy if it’s on a steak.”

“Varric, I was just getting warmed up there. I hadn’t gotten to ‘turgid member’ and ‘throbbing meat’.”

Varric set his quill aside and leaned back in his chair. “Turgid is also never sexy. It sounds diseased.”

Isabela slid off the table where she had been lounging to watch Varric take her dictation and straddled his chair. “And you would know sexy would you, you great hunk of dwarf?”

From that vantage, Varric had an unbroken line of sight with the breasts that all of Kirkwall knew and coveted.

_—all of Kirkwall? —_

_—it’s called hyperbole—_

“You know it, Rivaini. You’re looking at the chest that launched a thousand ships.”

Isabela drew one fingertip suggestively down the center of her cleavage, matching the movement with her other hand, drawing a finger down the center of Varric’s chest. “Care to prove that, big boy?”

“You’re on, but I warn you, I’m built wide everywhere.”

-

“I didn’t realize you were this diabolical” Anders said and pushed another completed page of transcription across the table to Fenris before it joined the stack of pages they had already completed together.

“Those two have prompted me to new heights.” Fenris said, drizzling sand onto the page to blot the ink.

“Or depths,” Anders said.

Fenris raised an eyebrow. “You’re the one who added the part with Isabela licking Bianca’s lath while Varric demonstrated the conveniences of a dwarf’s height on a human woman.”

Anders grinned. “That was good, wasn’t it?”

“It was exactly what they deserve.” Both Anders and Fenris took a moment to glare at the booklet that had prompted this bit of collaborative writing. Sitting on the table next to Anders' stack of paper, its title, _Bound for Bliss_ , and cover illustration of clasped hands with a chain dangling at their wrists were, unfortunately, the least offensive part of a novella that told the story of an apostate and a freed slave who found love (and much sex filled with turgid, throbbing, pulsating, _engorged_ members) when chained together.

While attributed to “Anonymous,” it had not taken much questioning at the printers guild to lead back to a certain dwarf and a certain pirate.

Inspired by the hateful book, Anders shook out his cramped hand, took another piece of paper off the stack, and readied himself for more writing. “Who knew you had such a gift for friend fiction?”


	10. The Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** So, basic idea would be Fenris helping Anders for his once in a while shaving of his stubble… Because shaving can be very sensual…
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This will be part of [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

The morning of Fenris’ Joining, Anders fussed around the room they shared until Fenris was ready to pin the man to the bed to distract them both. They could stay in bed until Dal sent someone to drag them naked down to the throne room for the evening ceremony.

“I should...” Anders swirled the brush over the shaving soap over and over until Fenris was certain he was going to wear away the entire bar before he ever set the brush to his stubble. “I should... do something. You know? Maybe some herbs or a spell. There has to be something to improve your chances.”

Fenris took the brush and straight razor from Anders and pushed him down in the room’s only chair. “We have discussed this. There is nothing you can do at this time. I am not even supposed to know the particulars of the ceremony.”

He silenced Anders’ protest with a hard stare. “You survived.”

“I did, but not everyone does. I can’t...”

 _... can’t lose you..._

They both heard the unspoken words, but that was how life was lived, was it not? There were always losses, especially for men like them. Better to move rather than allow that reality to trap them like insects in an amber of fear.

Fenris raised the brush and razor. “You were planning to shave?”

Anders was too caught up in his concern for Fenris to process the subject change with any alacrity. “What?”

“Shaving,” Fenris set the brush and razor aside before taking Anders’ face in his hands, thumbs brushing through the stubble on his cheeks. “Or were those for the cat?”

Anders’ expression tightened before he put a lightly trembling hand over Fenris’ – always his right hand over Fenris’ left, always bringing the cuffs close, always reminding them both that even if the world were between them, they were always bound. What had once been an embarrassing accident in a store deep under Kirkwall had become a promise and a binding from which they both took a strange comfort.

“Ser Pounce-a-lot has a perfectly serviceable name.”

Ser Pounce-a-lot raised his head from their bed at the sound of his name, blinking sleepy eyes before apparently deciding that sleep was more interesting than the men.

“He has an absurd name,” Fenris said, pressing his palms tight against Anders’ cheeks for a moment before he straightened and turned away. “And no one questions which cat when I speak of him as ‘the cat’.” He turned back with the damp towel Anders had readied when he had started his aborted effort at shaving. “Warm this.”

Anders took the towel, one corner of his mouth turning up in a smirk. Fenris mentally flipped a coin – heads, Anders would make a smart remark about how Fenris had come around to a bit of magic, tails, Anders would decide not to pull the wyvern’s tail just this once.

The coin winked in the light of his imagination, spinning through the air while Anders drew in a breath to speak.

In Fenris’ mind’s eye, the coin dropped into his hand and he closed his fingers tightly around it, waiting for the reveal.

Anders raised the towel to blow the breath out through pursed lips, steam rising from the cloth where the puff of air hit it before he wordlessly passed the towel back to Fenris.

Fenris had a mental flash of a silver coin, the portrait of Alistair face down in his palm to show the tails side of a relief image of the Fereldan seal.

He rewarded Anders with a smile for his restraint while he folded the towel into thirds. “Head back.”

Anders tipped his head back and closed his eyes, already anticipating the hot towel.

Ironic that years after Tevinter he would voluntarily tend to a mage in this way, and find it calming to them both. Fenris brought the towel up under Anders’ chin, covering as much skin as he could to let the moist heat soften the rough bristles that always seemed to reappear almost as soon as Anders finished shaving.

While the towel did its job, he stropped the razor, honing it down to the keenest edge, letting his mind drop into the emptiness of focus on one task at a time to the exclusion of all thought, all care, and all consideration for past or future in a simple present. There were no memories to haunt him, no fear for the very real possibility that he would die before the night was out, there was only a blade and the strap and sweeping motion of one over the other.

When the razor finally met his exacting standards for sharpness, he set it aside and took up the soap brush once again, moistening it before he took the towel from Anders’ face.

“That’s the worst part,” Anders said, shivering dramatically when his skin was bared. “Everything’s too cold.”

Fenris silenced him by the simple expedient of using the soapy brush on Anders’ upper lip and chin first. What they had was… more than he might ever have expected to have with anyone, let alone a mage and an abomination, but that did not mean that Anders still did not talk too much at times.

The room was far from silent even without Anders’ contribution. Vigil’s Keep was alive and awake outside their bedroom door and outside their window. He could hear distant voices, the rumble of carriages, footsteps and sometimes raucous shouts. In lulls in the ambient noise of keep life, he could hear Ser Pounce-a-lot purring, and closer and more immediately, he could hear the soft scritching of the brush’s bristles passing over the stubble on Anders’ face and neck.

Earlier this morning the room had been filled with other sounds – sighs, whispering sheets, moans muffled against skin or held back behind closed lips. Maker willing, it would not be the last time.

He pushed the thought away and set the brush aside to take up the razor, raising Anders’ chin with a fingertip to accentuate and smooth the line of his neck.

The sound of a razor scraping away hair had always reminded Fenris of the sound of a piece of paper when it first caught a flame, a subtle hiss that seemed loud even amid the keep’s ambient noise.

Anders held himself utterly still under Fenris’ care, his chest rising and falling with slow, even breaths. His lashes drew red-gold crescents on his cheekbones, but even with his eyes closed, there was a tiny pucker between his eyebrows to betray his disquiet, not with the blade at his throat, but with what they would face later in the evening.

The pulse in his throat fluttered under the skin when Fenris revealed it with his blade, scraping away the soap that had hidden it. He took the razor away for a moment and drew calloused fingertips over the fragile skin until Anders opened his eyes to give him a look of naked pleading.

Fenris shook his head and gave Anders’ pulse point a last caress before he returned to his task.

Shaving Anders let him explore the man’s face without a trace of self-consciousness. He had to examine every plane, every angle, had to know the delicate groove between his jaw and the space under Anders’ ear where Fenris could press his lips and always hear an indrawn breath or moan in response.

He could test the skin after the razor had passed, first with fingertips, and after he wiped away the last traces of bitter soap, with his lips, which were more sensitive than his fingers with their fighter’s calluses and scars.

He left Anders’ upper lip and chin for last, pausing to strop the blade again before setting to the delicate task of shaving the awkward dips and rises above and below his lips. Clearing this space was Fenris’ reward for his patience and care with Anders. It was Anders’ reward for stillness and silence when neither were part of his nature.

And when Fenris wiped away the last traces of soap from Anders’ lips and set aside the razor and towel before he straddled Anders’ thighs to cup his smooth cheeks in his hands and kiss him, they had both found a place of calm and silence while the rest of the world went on around them.

What came later in the evening would come regardless of their preparations. The past had already come and gone.

What mattered was the moment, and the moment was good.


	11. No Real Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** what about Anders bound ‘saarebas’ way due to whatever reason? ‘f course he will need help of a certain elf, now wouldn’t he?
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Aceldama](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364009%22) and before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

“Choose.”

Anders thrashed helplessly, caught between the iron grip of a hulking kossith on one side, and the equally steely hold of a templar on the other.

“Choose,” the voice repeated, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. “Or the choice will be made for you.”

Two stone biers stood before him, the source of the formless terror that held him on the brink of sobbing. On the left, a brazier with a lyrium-tipped sunburst brand nestled in its smoldering coals; on the right, a collar, control rod, shackles, and - most horrifying - a simple needle and thread.

“Choose.”

He shook his head, whipping his face with stray strands of hair, lips clenched tight to keep from screaming or begging or breaking down to wail with his terror. He could not choose between losing everything that made him who he was - his feelings, his magic, his autonomy - and the sheer horror of what was done to mages under the Qun. Which was worse - not to feel or regret what was taken? Or to have a self, but lose everything else until even the self was worn down under the drop-by-drop water torture of the Qun’s treatment of the saarebas? Tranquility without hope? Or false hope in captivity every moment of every day, trapped behind sewn-shut eyes, a silenced mouth, no touch, no speech, no individuality, nothing.

“You have chosen.”

A faceless figure took up the needle and thread…

…and a hand clamped over his mouth to muffle his screams.

“Wake up.”

Anders thrashed against the hold, fear lending him strength to fight free, landing an elbow in yielding flesh that brought a muffled “mmpf” of pain before he heard, “It’s a nightmare.”

He was freed for an instant before the hand was back, wrapping him even as he struggled to be free, to escape the winding cloth around his feet and the arms that pulled him in close against…

An unarmored body.

A voice repeated, “It is a nightmare. You’re dreaming. Stop fighting me and wake up.”

The dream broke apart and Anders stiffened a last time before he could let the struggle go and go limp in the tangled sheets and too-warm clasp of Fenris’ arms. His panting breaths came out like sobs while the last remnants of the nightmare dissipated back to whatever dark region of the Fade they had come from.

He pushed ineffectually at Fenris’ hands until he could manage to say “I’m awake” to get Fenris to let go and let him sit up. Even without the frigid air turning the sweat on his shirt and skin to ice water, he trembled too much to even consider lighting a candle without magic. Instead he summoned a tiny wisp of magic to light the darkened ship’s cabin to prove to himself that he and Fenris were the room’s only occupants.

“Darkspawn?”

Anders shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Can you sleep?”

Anders shook his head again. “Not until I drop.”

Fenris sighed and tugged on the back of Anders’ shirt. “Come back under the blankets.”

Anders let Fenris pull him back into the bunk and under the blankets, shivering until Fenris pulled him into the circle of his arms and tucked the blankets around them both.

“When I lived with the Fog Warriors, they told me many stories…”

They stayed that way, with Fenris replacing images of lyrium brands and black thread with tales of warriors’ adventures in hot jungles until the sun came up and the ship woke to life around them.


	12. Oneirophobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** The original kmeme prompt that I failed to fill at all satisfactorily was for Anders and Fenris and Fade sex (with a bit more detail, but it's moot anyway.) What I wrote and did not post as a fill was more Anders and Fenris in the Fade with angst and an opportunity for Anders to learn a bit more about things Fenris does not say.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place between [Cingulomania](http://archiveofourown.org/works/276978) and [Latibule](http://archiveofourown.org/works/286797).
> 
> This kind of highlights a bit of my headcanon that's been used in Volutions before - that Justice can't go to the Fade in Anders' dreams, so Anders goes there alone. This headcanon is based on Justice's dialog during the Fade part of Feynriel's quest.

Anders didn’t often wander the Fade, especially not since coming to Kirkwall, where the Veil was thin and demons congregated on the other side, eager for their chance to come through to wreak havoc and bring harm. Even so, there were times when a trip into the Fade to walk the realm of dreams was the only freedom he had. It was the only place where he was only Anders and not Anders with a side order of Justice.

He was no somniari, but he was a mage, and that gave him more freedom in the Fade than an ordinary mortal had. After a day in which he had lost two patients – both a mother and a newborn child – he could not face his dreams, or his inevitable nightmares.

_This is dangerous._

“Isn’t it always?” He might as well be talking to himself, but a year in solitary had given him that habit anyway. These days he just had a voice in his head with a little more substance.

Justice continued his protests while Anders hung up his coat and readied himself for sleep, but in the end, Anders was going to sleep whether Justice approved or not, and once he was in the Fade, he was beyond Justice’s reach, just for a little while.

He closed his eyes and let himself drift, a very specific image in mind as he slipped under the tide of sleep and into the Fade. His own dreams and nightmares were still out there, lurking, waiting for their opportunity like stalking templars, but he would take even a little respite.

The setting he chose was a forest clearing around a perfect, crystalline pool that he remembered from his youth before the Circle. Before his father’s suspicions and his mother’s tears. He might misremember and over-idealize in the distance that was measured in both miles and years, but its perfection was part of what he needed in a desperately imperfect life.

Perhaps the sky on that long-ago day had not been such a brilliant blue, nor the breeze so sweet with the scent of fall, carrying an undertone of healthy decay from the forest floor’s carpeting of leaves. Perhaps the pool’s water had not been so clear that he could see the sand and rock at its bottom and easily watch the minnows and frogs. He didn’t care; he didn’t want reality to break this memory’s perfection.

He stretched out on his stomach at the water’s edge, letting the scene lift some of the weight he carried on his shoulders. It was a safe space in the Fade, even if it was a prosaic one. He liked the simplicity of the darting shapes under the water. He liked watching the sunfish lifting pebbles in its mouth to clear a circular depression in the pond’s bottom that it would guard from all intruders. Anders knew that the sunny didn’t belong in his idealized pond, but he didn’t care. He liked the iridescent blue highlights on its scales and the sharp spines along its fins. It was a big fish in a small pond, and guarded its territory fiercely. He knew from experience that in a large lake, it would be just as fierce when faced with overwhelmingly large intruders.

It reminded him of…

It didn’t matter.

He let the cool breeze blow away some of the stink of Darktown from his spirit, and just relaxed.

Until the sky overhead began to darken.

Looking up, he saw nightmares in the encroaching clouds. He had relaxed too much, let his guard down too far, and now the nightmares were coming to claim their due.

He knew from bitter experience that the nightmares were always more cruel when they caught him after being denied.

He could not do it. He could not face the horrors tonight when he had only just managed to lift the tiniest fraction of weight from his soul.

The first crack of lightning was followed by a rumble of thunder that snarled around the rapidly constricting circle of daylight that had Anders and his pond at its center.

Anders knew he only had moments. He gathered his will and dove into pond, willing himself somewhere else. Anywhere else.

For a moment, he found himself eye-to-eye with the sunfish – he was smaller, it was larger – in dream logic, it needed no explanation that they were of a size, and he was reminded again of stubborn, spiky beings limned in blue.

The sunfish’s cleared circle in the pond bottom drew him down, growing larger as he grew smaller before he burst through the cleared circle and out…

…into…

A circle of standing stones?

Anders turned in slow wonderment, barely registering a heat so thick that he felt as though he were breathing steam from a tea kettle filled with an entire jungle’s worth of leaves.

Outside the circle lay jungle, thick and lush enough to block Anders’ view barely an arm’s length from the stones, but the foliage rustled and swayed with tiny movements.

Under it all lay the thick stink of blood.

“What are you doing here?”

Anders jumped despite himself and turned to face Fenris. For a moment he faced a prickly-spined, blue-scaled fish under a blanket of cold water before Fenris’ will and the fact that it was Fenris’ dream won out over Anders’ dream’s intrusion.

“You don’t belong here,” Fenris said, confusion underlying the words’ harsh delivery. “This isn’t your time.”

The hole in the jungle canopy far above them, the source of the streaming sunlight that lit the circle, began to darken at the edges.

 _“Shit.”_ Anders shaded his eyes and squinted until he could make out the writhing shapes of his nightmares roiling in the clouds. “I don’t suppose this is your happy place, is it? Because we could both use some happy, and soon.”

“I was happy here.” Fenris looked around the clear space with its green walls and dirt underfoot stamped down into a hard, flat floor by countless feet over countless years.

Lightning flashed and for a moment, by its light, Anders saw the clearing awash with blood, the standing stones painted red with sprays and splatters that told a tale of violence and murder.

“No, no!” Anders shook his head frantically. “We need _happy_ thoughts. Happy memories!”

In Fenris’ dream, Fenris held the power.

“Something from your childhood, maybe?” Anders snatched at the air the moment the foolish words left his mouth to try to take them back before they could reach Fenris’ ears, but it was too late.

The storm rolled over them with a burst of thunder that shook Anders to his bones before all the light in the clearing went out.

Fenris’ words carried through the noise as though they were sharing a couch in a quiet room. “I don’t remember my childhood. My first memories are of pain. And of Danarius.”

Then lightning flared and froze into a constant burning light that made Anders’ being ache down to the soul. It illuminated the rune-marked walls of a circular chamber, and Fenris, huddled on the floor.

He looked ravaged, not powerful and beautiful as Anders knew him. The marks on his skin wept blood and gleaming trickles of lyrium tears, coating him in a mix of angry red and silver-blue.

“No, no, no…” Anders half-moaned, dropping to his knees in front of Fenris. “I said happy thoughts!”

A voice crooned out of the walls, “Little wolf… Little wolf, it is time for more. Say thank, you, Master.”

Anders shuddered right along with Fenris at the touch of that voice like a loathsome caress.

And those words.

But worse came as Fenris raised his head, and Anders saw the tip of his tongue between his teeth.

“Th—”

Desperate to silence Fenris before he could say _those_ words to _that_ man, he caught Fenris’ cheeks between his palms and kissed him.

He could not face Danarius again, not even in a dream, and he could not _bear_ to see what Fenris dreamed of when he remembered his master.

It wasn’t an idealized kiss, even in a dream. His teeth bumped against Fenris’ teeth. Fenris bit his tongue hard enough to hurt, but he pressed on. His heart was hammering in his chest with emotions that had nothing to do with lust and affection and far more to do with fear and desperation.

But it worked. Fenris did not say those words, and he grew stronger, pushing up out of his huddled crouch to bring his arms around Anders to hold him, or cling to him, or give Anders a place to cling in turn.

Then they found the way they fit, where their lips and tongues moved just so, where things felt right.

Fenris pulled away from Anders to fix him with a searching look. _“That_ was my happy memory?”

There was something about the subtle upward turn at the corners of Fenris’ mouth that made Anders look away from Fenris to take in their changed surroundings.

They were on a battlement barely lit by wind-whipped torches. The details weren’t identical to Anders’ own memories, but Fenris wore a heavy wool cloak against the biting chill and Anders could not mistake the courtyard below for anywhere else.

“The Vigil?” His voice rose with incredulity. “The Vigil is your happy place?”

“If that is how you choose to see it,” Fenris said as he turned from Anders toward the door that would take them off the battlement and out of the cold. “Theuderic.”

Anders gaped at him like a fish for a moment before he hurried to follow Fenris through the door and into the warmth.


	13. Oneirophobia II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** No direct prompt. This was inspired by a [kmeme prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/8469.html?thread=31706389#t31706389) that I could not make work in my head. By the time I wrote another story of Anders and Fenris in the Fade, it had diverged so far from the prompt that I won't even link the OP to this. 
> 
> **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Aceldama](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364009) and before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

Sleeping with a man whose dreams were populated by monsters did not make for restful nights. Anders could not fault Fenris for choosing to spend most nights in his own home, but he valued Wicked Grace night, when Fenris would walk him back to Hawke’s mansion and allow Anders to talk him into staying, with the argument that the streets so late at night were safe for no man alone.

The sex was more than a mere perk on those nights, but for Anders, having come to sexual maturity in the Circle, sleeping with a lover was more rare and treasured than merely fucking him. He almost always slept better on those nights as well.

Almost always.

Tonight thoughts of what he had to ask Hawke to do kept him awake. Thoughts of a templar named Alrik. Thoughts of branded mages and lost hopes. Thoughts of a future he _had to make different,_ and—

_“No.”_

Fenris breathed the denial so quietly that Anders half-believed that he had imagined the word. He held his breath and turned his head to see Fenris’ expression in the dim light that filtered through the window glass from the moon and city lights.

Fenris’ face was drawn tight with some emotion, the skin between his brow lightly furrowed from the downward push of his dark eyebrows. While Anders watched him, his lips parted and he breathed “No,” again.

Anders brushed hair away from Fenris’ face and murmured, “It’s just a dream.”

“N—” Fenris caught a sobbing breath, and Anders’ heart ached. There was only one way to remedy these things.

“Fenris.” Anders braced himself on his elbow to half-sit up and  raised his voice to a normal speaking tone. “Wake up.”

Fenris’ eyes snapped open immediately, searching the room and Anders’ face for some sign of trouble before he lunged up to catch Anders’ lips for a kiss.

Anders stroked his cheek before he lay down again and gathered Fenris into his arms the way Fenris had held him on so many other nights. Fenris allowed it, but he held himself stiff until he began to fade back into sleep and relaxed with his cheek on Anders’ chest and a hand over his heart.

Anders traced the familiar lines of Fenris’ cuff with his fingertips until Fenris’ breathing slowed into the rhythms of sleep, then turned his thoughts elsewhere until light pinked the sky and a new day of serving the city dawned.

· · ·

Fenris stayed on nights other than Wicked Grace night, albeit with less certainty. This night he had stayed because Hawke had left for Sundermount and might not be back for days. There would be work in the morning – there was always work in the morning – but that was for the morning, and they were both accustomed to sleepless nights.

With his body driven to the best kind of exhaustion, Anders dozed, drifting down into that place where his mind slipped back and forth between the Fade and the waking world.

In that place, he felt Fenris tense against him and heard again a whispered, “No.”

Had he been fully awake, he would have known it was a bad idea; had he been fully asleep, he would never have heard Fenris, but in that intermediate place, Anders’ curiosity translated into action. He had to know….

He should have known better that to find Fenris in the Fade. If anything should remain personal, a man’s dreams should be his own.

He recognized Kirkwall’s Chantry instantly, and worse, he saw the alcove where he had found Karl the night that Hawke had come to help him with his newly-met elven friend as backup. There were templar bodies on the floor, the scent of blood in the air, and…

And Fenris stood between him and a man he could only glimpse – an arm and length of Circle robe giving away that Fenris was speaking to a Circle mage. All he could think was that Fenris was playing out some horrible remembrance of Karl’s death, and the thought puzzled him.

“No,” Fenris said, and Anders felt a chill at the sorrow he heard there. “It isn’t you.”

The voice that answered him was not Karl’s voice. Its tenor and accent were so familiar to Anders, yet different enough that it took him too long to place it. “Why am I here?”

Anders moved closer on feet that seemed to float inches above the floor, which was good because he felt numb from head to toe.

Fenris kissed the man, who did nothing to return the kiss or push away, only stood there as placid as a doll. When he broke from the kiss, Anders grunted with the force of recognition that struck him like a punch in the gut. The man Fenris had kissed was Anders – Anders in a Circle robe with the angry red of a Tranquil brand marring his forehead.

Fenris carefully, tenderly traced the mark on Anders’ forehead and said again, “No.”

The Tranquil Anders said, “It does not hurt.”

Fenris said nothing, but Anders knew the set of his shoulders well enough to know that he was going to do something. He covered his mouth with his hand when Fenris kissed the dream Anders again, and this time, his right shoulder rose and fell. Whatever it was he had done was hidden by the shield of his body, but the dream Anders made a small, surprised sound and went limp.

Fenris let the weight of the dream Anders take him to his knees to cradle him there while around them the details of the Chantry drew themselves in reverse – hard lines smudging and erasing, color losing its density, details disappearing until what had been a solid building became nothing but another piece of the Fade waiting for a new setting to be drawn for a new dream to play out.

Only the grieving elf and the body in his arms retained any solidity, and Anders could not bring himself to stay to offer anything in a province of the Fade where he did not belong. He had his own nightmares, and his curiosity had bought him a new one to add to the menagerie.

· · ·

Fingertips on his forehead woke him in the morning. When he opened his eyes, Fenris snatched them away and cleared his throat. “You probably have people waiting for you in Darktown already.”

Anders saw Fenris’ grief again in the light of day in one of those too-vivid flashes that came from a dream that wanted to claw its way out of the Fade and into the waking world. He forced a smile to combat the image and reached up to draw Fenris down to him with a hand against his neck. “If it were urgent, they would be beating down Hawke’s door. I’m feeling like staying in bed a little while longer.”

“You and your feelings,” Fenris said.

And then he gave Anders many more feelings to chase away the night’s dreams for them both. 


	14. Bollocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Kittens!
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Aceldama](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364009) and before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

“Anders.”

Anders stopped with his hand on the bathroom door and raised his eyes to see Hawke coming down the hallway with Orana trailing behind him. “We need to talk about your cat.”

Anders shrugged inwardly and set aside thoughts of a bath, sunk down to his chin in hot water in Hawke’s marble tub; he’d known this day would come. “I’ll get my things. Thanks for letting me stay here, but it’s time Ser Pounce-a-lot got used to Darktown and I can get more work done if I’m there full time.”

But Maker, he was going to miss that bathtub.

Hawke sighed and shook his head. “That isn’t what I mean.” He dropped his voice for an aside to no one, “And Fenris would kill me anyway.

“What I wanted to know is whether you’re sure Ser Pounce-a-lot is a he-ser and not a she-ser?”

Orana peered around Hawke’s arm and opened her mouth as though to add something, but a lifetime as a slave won out over whatever it was she wanted to say.

“What do you mean?” Anders asked. “Have you seen his bollocks? I’ve seen them, usually in my face when I don’t get up early enough to let his nibs out for his morning constitutional. You’ve been with Isabela long enough that I can’t believe I have to have the birds and bees talk w—”

Hawke grabbed the arm of Anders’ bathrobe and pulled him down the hall.

“I’m sorry,” Orana whispered as Hawke tugged Anders past her. “It’s just I had the meat out for dinner and…”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Hawke told her, walking Anders down the stairs and through the kitchen where he pointed to a smear of blood on the chopping block and then to the floor where another smear started just under the block along with a few paw prints that were far too small to be Brutal’s.

They followed the smear like a trio of amateur sleuths in a pantomime, across the floor, down the hall, where the smear transitioned to three sloppy blood prints on the wall where the cunning thief had apparently had trouble getting his prize up to the window sill and out into the garden.

Hawke tugged Anders out into the garden with Orana still on their heels and pointed to a drag mark that came out of the flower bed under the open window. They followed the combination of dirt and blood to a lilac bush where Hawke knelt and pulled Anders down with him. “In there. Now tell me about your cat’s bollocks again.”

Anders knelt and pushed branches aside and peered into the dark under the bush before he made a sound he refused to admit was somewhere in the general vicinity of a squeal.

He scrabbled under the branches and came out with a tiny orange kitten who hissed and spat at him with all the ferocity of a much larger predator while a low _mrowwl_ drifted out from under the bush.

“Ser Pounce-a-lot’s bollocks are fuzzy and orange and about the size of a pair of hazelnuts,” Anders said. “They are most often seen when he is making a point, and he does spend so much time licking them I get jealous of his flexibility sometimes.”

He made the kitten do a little dance for Hawke that had Orana covering her mouth against her giggles. “But he’s not the mother.”

Hawke pushed the branches out of the way to peer under the bush again. “Four orange kittens, one orange cat, and the steak that was supposed to be my dinner. What do you say to that?”

Anders used the kitten’s paw to point up to his bedroom window.

Ser Pounce-a-lot stared regally down at them from Anders’ windowsill. While they watched, he turned his back to them and presented the garden with an excellent view of his rump.

“I say fuzzy, orange, and about the size of a pair of hazelnuts.” Anders gave the kitten a smooch on the top of its head and put it back under the lilac bush with its mother.


	15. Style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Zevran, Fenris, "swords"
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

The first clear, warm, _dry_ day of late spring saw Zevran still in residence at Vigil’s Keep during a too-brief stop in his rounds evading the tenacious efforts of some factions of the Antivan Crows to eliminate an upstart whoreson elf who thought he could change centuries of traditions that had worked perfectly well for them.

As Zevran had said with a laugh, they thought that because _they_ were not whoreson elves.

On this particular day, Fenris was also in residence, having little to do during the off days of his duty routine. Zevran grinned at him during breakfast and tilted his head toward Anders and Dal, who were deep in a discussion of the best way to help King Alistair with his Circle reform efforts in Ferelden. Occasionally Anders’ eyes would spark with a blue glow when he made a particularly strenuous point, but Dal took it in stride, addressing Justice in those moments as though he were a separate third party in their conversation.

“They will be at this all day, yes?” Zevran said between bites of a thick mush of oats with nuts and dried fruit cooked into the grey mess that he ate quickly, but without relish. He and Fenris shared a mutual despair with Fereldan cuisine. “Come out to the practice yard with me and let us see if we cannot put their minds to other things.”

Fenris shrugged and nodded with his mouth full. Seeing the light in Anders’ eyes, he didn’t expect that anything would distract him from “the cause” but perhaps Zevran had more leverage with Dal than Fenris had with Anders plus Justice.

Zevran finished his breakfast and rose to murmur something in Dal’s ear. Fenris watched while Dal shook his head and motioned to Anders, but Zevran merely raised his voice enough for Fenris to hear, “You two can continue this outside just as well, and fresh air will be good for us all.”

Again Dal tried to protest, but Zevran said, “Humor me, my love. What can it hurt?”

Most of the time Fenris thought that Dal had Zevran firmly wrapped around his little finger, but every so often, he witnessed moments like these and wondered if Zevran just liked to let everyone think that was how things worked with them. Fenris did not doubt the assassin’s devotion to Dal, so if it was better to paint the Hero of Ferelden as a man in charge of all things, including his love life, then Fenris believed that it was the picture Zevran would paint for the world.

He tried to imagine doing that with Anders and scowled, realizing too late when he looked away from Zevran and Dal that Anders was watching him. No, he was not up to Zevran’s level of insouciance by any means. He softened the scowl to something more like his habitual frown and said, “You could use some sun.”

No, not up to Zevran’s level at all.

•••

Fenris and Zevran warmed up first with simple forms and wooden practice blades. They had sparred together with live steel in the past, but Zevran suggested that they should go all out for their audience, “And all out with a real blade would be, shall we say, messy.”

Even with Anders right there to act as healer, Fenris had to agree. Explaining to his commander why he had severed his lover’s arm would transcend awkward straight into potentially fatal.

They worked together as the sun slid higher in the sky, and for all that they might have appeared unequally matched at a first glance, Zevran forced Fenris to work harder while they sparred than he often did when truly fighting for his life. It wasn’t only that Zevran was quick; he used every motion with careful calculation for maximum efficiency.

If Fenris raised his sword in both hands for a hard strike, he could expect that more often than not, he would feel a bruising thump of a wooden dagger tip in his ribs or a slash drawn across his thigh with the edge of Zevran’s practice sword.

He would have been hamstrung ten times over if they were fighting with live steel.

He left his own marks on Zevran, staggering him back and even knocking him off his feet when he did land a blow past Zevran’s speed and agility. Each time he did, Zevran would grin and take his hand when he offered it to pull him up off the hard-packed dirt of the practice yard.

One such time Zevran looked over to see Anders and Dal still deep in animated conversation and shook his head. “We shall  have to be sly now, my friend.”

Before Fenris could ask what Zevran meant, Zevran had lunged at him with a furious whirlwind of blows that Fenris was hard-pressed to fend off. Again and again, Zevran lunged, whirled, and struck, pressing an attack that Fenris had not expected even after all the times they had sparred together until they were both hunched over their knees, sweat-drenched and panting.

Zevran peered up at Fenris through his wet hair and grinned. “Now, my friend, we have them where we want them.”

Fenris didn’t see that they’d made any inroads in distracting Dal and Anders from their talk until Zevran stood upright and shucked off his armor until he was down to nothing but bracers, boots, and that kilt of his. His sweat-slicked skin caught the sun and turned him into a living statue cast from bronze by a sculptor possessed not just of skill but genius.

A glance toward Dal and Anders showed that Dal’s attention was wandering to the two elves at last.

“Go on,” Zevran urged sotto voce, “you must be hot in all that black leather, and if our friends decide they have better things to do with their time than talk, who are we to complain?”

Fenris resisted Zevran’s urgings until Anders tugged on Dal’s sleeve to draw him back into the conversation. Zevran hissed, “Do it now, before we lose them again.”

Fenris handed his wooden sword to Zevran and took no small pleasure in seeing him sag under its weight – Wade had set a metal core in the wood to give it a heft that would be of some use to Fenris in practice. He snuck glances through the screen of his hair while he unbuckled his chest piece and peeled his jerkin off like a damp second skin and felt the beginnings of a small, secret smile when Anders stumbled mid-rant and stopped to stare.

“So,” Zevran said, passing Fenris’ sword back to him. “Shall we continue?”

Dal cut them off. “Zev, it’s getting hot out here. Can you come inside, I need your opinion on some new intelligence that came in last night.”

Zevran turned his head to grin at Fenris before he composed his features to a less leering smile to turn on Dal. “It is always my pleasure to give you anything you may need.” He gathered up his discarded armor and added, “I am certain that my friend here is looking overheated. Perhaps the healer will have a look at him just to be sure?”

Fenris managed not to protest that he was hardly overheated – Minrathous got much hotter than this – particularly when Anders immediately sprang to his feet. “I’ll get him out of the sun.”

Zevran tipped Fenris a wink and left him to Anders’ solicitous care.

Fenris let Anders fuss over him and considered that perhaps he should ask Zevran for a few lessons in his style of dueling.


	16. Friendly Concern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Anders/Fenris, walls (disclaimer, in this case, there are both Anders and Fenris on the other side of a wall from Hawke and Isabela)
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place during [Latibule](http://archiveofourown.org/works/286797)'s epilogue.

Isabela danced from foot to foot and reached out repeatedly as though to pull Hawke away from the wall where he had his ear tightly pressed.

“Can you hear anything?” she whispered, wishing yet again that she’d gotten to the cabin first after Anders and Fenris had left the deck.

Hawke waved her to silence and whispered, “I think they’re… talking?”

Isabela grabbed at his arm and hissed, “Let me listen!”

The silence dragged out for far too long for Isabela’s tastes, broken by the creak of wood and the lapping sound of the waves around the ship. Every time she tried to get Hawke to move, he shooed her away until he finally made a face and sat up. “It’s completely quiet in there.”

This time Isabela jerked him away from the wall between the cabin they shared and the one that Anders and Fenris were sharing as the happy newlyweds. He grunted and hit the other wall with a low chuckle at her haste to put her ear to the wall.

At first all she heard were the sounds of the ship conducted through the wood, but she waited patiently and was rewarded by the sound of a low groan in a man’s voice. She pumped a fist in the air and grinned, waving off Hawke’s whispered questions to hear a faint, muffled moan and another groan.

“What—”

She cut off his question with a gesture considered rude across most of Thedas and tried to picture who was doing what to whom to evoke those particular sounds, grinning like a fiend when she heard, _“Now, I—”_ She would have been willing to bet a few sovereigns that she’d just heard Fenris on the brink of a truly memorable moment.  

After a few more minutes she laughed softly and left her place at the wall to go to Hawke. “I think they’ve worked a few things out.”

She slid a hand down his back to give his rump a squeeze. “Now we need to talk about that spanking you gave me up on deck.”


	17. The Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** No prompt, just a desire to write something. It seems I write fluff when I'm sick. 
> 
> **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place after [Aceldama](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364009) and before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

“I have something for you.”

Anders looked up from his work, pushing a few strands of steam-damp hair out of his face with the back of his forearm. He was stirring a cauldron filled with cloth and a pungent soap that he concocted himself for his clinic laundering. He let the wood paddle go and straightened to give Fenris his full attention.  

Fenris fidgeted on the other side of the cauldron, suddenly very interested in the soles of his feet, first the left, then the right, brushing some bits of dirt off his right foot while he snuck a look through his bangs up at Anders.

“Yes?” Anders prompted while he swiped his hands down his coat to do a cursory job of drying them.

Fenris took so long cleaning his foot that Anders’ fingers practically twitched with the effort of restraining himself from fetching a basin and some water. It wasn’t that he didn’t recognize a delaying tactic when he saw it, but just because he recognized it, didn’t make it any less effective or frustrating.

When he had apparently cleaned away every last speck of dust or grit he might have picked up walking through Darktown, Fenris dipped two fingers into one of his belt pouches and held out his hand to Anders, palm up.

Lying in his open hand was a key.

Anders looked from the key up to Fenris’ face and then back down at the key. He could feel his eyebrows drawing together to reflect his puzzlement, because he couldn’t put Fenris holding out a key to him in any logical position in his world. When he looked up again, Fenris was beginning to bristle, lips thinning, brow creasing, eyes narrowing, and _that_ fit a place in his world that was both logical and unexpectedly welcome – he knew this Fenris, and seeing him in all his thin-skinned, ill-tempered, _Fenris-ness_ fit the key in place.

“Is this to your house?” Anders asked, reaching out before Fenris could change his mind and rescind the proffered key.

“The Darktown entrance,” Fenris said. His bristling began to subside as soon as Anders plucked the key off his palm, like a cat that had been momentarily startled and was relaxing one raised hackle at a time. “I had boarded it up after last summer, but Varric helped me after I thought it would be more useful with a heavier door and a good lock.”

Anders clasped his fingers around the key, feeling the metal dig into his palm, solid and real, and so very strange. Was this really a gift from his… whatever Fenris was?

Fenris dipped his fingers into his pouch again and came out with a coiled leather thong. “I had thought,” he said almost diffidently, “that you might wear it.”

He held out his hand and Anders numbly put the key back in his palm, watching while Fenris looped a hitch knot through the bow and held up what was now something of a simple necklace. “It’s no Tevinter Chantry amulet…” he said, and Anders took that as his cue to hastily unclasp the amulet that Hawke had given him and shove it in his pocket.

Hawke would bloody well understand.

All the bristling and raised hackles slipped away and Anders caught a glimpse of Fenris as he was only rarely allowed to see him, with clear eyes, a smooth brow, and a smile on his lips. He held still while Fenris stepped closer to tie the necklace securely around his neck and even let him tuck the key under his shirt, even though the cold metal made him hiss through his teeth before it started to warm against his skin.

For that smile? For this gift? He would almost be willing to let Fenris drop a piece of ice down his shirt instead.

When Fenris kissed him, he took back the almost.


	18. One Time Offer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** This fit two prompts at once:  
>  1\. Fenris saying someting in Arcanum about Anders of a personal nature and refusing to translate for Isabela. If Anders overhears the comment? I’ll box up some snow and send it to you.  
> 2\. Fenris says something important in Arcanum, forgetting that Circle mages know at least a little.  
> Throughout the early parts of Volutions it’s been in my head that Anders doesn’t know Arcanum, but once you start sleeping with someone who tends to forget the Trade Tongue in moments of extreme emotion… you pick a few things up.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Epithymy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/369749) and before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

“So, you and Anders?”

Fenris did not look up from his diamondback hand until Brutal chuffed at him that it was his turn to bet. He tossed in a few coins and waited to see if the mabari would meet his bet. “This is an obvious ploy, Isabela.” 

“Maybe,” she said without a trace of apology, “but you have to give me credit for waiting until he went up to talk to Varric about that new flu hitting the dwarves.” 

She discarded a card and took the replacement Brutal pushed onto the table with his nose before adding her own coins to the pot. “But that doesn’t answer the question. Tell me you’re letting him use magic in bed. You aren’t getting the full experience if you aren’t letting—” 

“Isabela.” Fenris interrupted her, his tone strangely pleasant. “Are you asking for details?” 

“Oh yes!” She clapped her hands together, eager enough for a glimpse into their bedroom practices that she actually forgot that she was holding a handful of cards and money was on the table. 

On the other hand - or paw as the case might be - Fenris saw Brutal watching her cards. What would a mabari care what two men did behind closed doors anyway? Apparently little. The hound nosed a few more coins out into the pot. 

Fenris laid his hand out on the table and leaned closer to Isabela. “Do you swear never to ask again if I give you details?” 

“I promise,” she said without hesitation. 

“Swear on your ship.” 

Brutal put his paws up on the table to get a better look at Fenris’ hand and whined before turning his cards face up with his teeth. Neither Fenris nor Isabela broke eye contact to see if he had won or not. “I swear on The Lovers’ Wake that I will never ask you for details of your sex life with Anders again.” Under her breath she added, “I can make up the rest on my own.” 

She should have known from Fenris’ smile that she would get what she asked for, but not how she wanted it. 

The syllables in Arcanum rolled off his tongue like poetry, but she could not understand a word of what he said. His expression, however, was not just calm, or even peaceful, but strangely… happy. At points, his voice deepened, the flow of words slowed, and she could just imagine that voice against the nape of her neck or those words in her ear. 

He spoke and she listened, and he might have been describing to her what he had bought at the market earlier in the day, but she knew a bedroom voice when she heard it. 

Someone coughed behind her. 

Fenris looked up and stopped speaking, his expression abruptly turning challenging while his skin darkened with a sudden blush. 

Isabela didn’t need to turn to know who she would see, but she did anyway just to see the expression on Anders’ face. 

He did not disappoint with his shining eyes and parted lips, his ears bright red while his cheeks flamed. Best of all, he was smiling. He did little enough of that in recent months. 

He cleared his throat and licked his lips before saying, “I was going back to Hawke’s.” 

Fenris’ chair scraped on the floor in his hurry to get to his feet. “You cannot go without an escort.” 

They were gone in moments. Isabela finally dragged her eyes away from the door when they left and glanced down at the winning hand and coins Fenris had left on the table. 

“Looks like we split the pot.” Brutal whined in agreement and pushed the cards across the table to her, wordlessly indicating that it was her deal.


	19. Meeting of Minds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** No prompt! This is Hawke and Ser Pounce-a-lot with almost no appearance from Anders or Fenris. 
> 
> **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Epithymy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/369749) and before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657), but more specifically between [The Key](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280202/chapters/585141) and [No Real Choice](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280202/chapters/463752).

It was late, but in Kirkwall it seemed as though it was always either too late at night or too early in the morning. Nothing was ever moderate in the City of Chains.

Hawke sat in front of the fire in his study with a glass of wine that had been watered so heavily, even Justice wouldn’t have complained about Anders’ drinking it. He had seen Isabela out with a last toe-curling kiss at the door and settled in to let his mind unspool its constantly running thoughts enough to get some sleep before he got up to start another day of getting into everyone’s business.

All appearances to the contrary, Hawke and Isabela did not spend every night snogging each other senseless until dawn. More often than not lately, Isabela preferred to sleep on _The Lovers’ Wake_ while Hawke preferred waking in his own bed. It didn’t mean that they didn’t have meaningful awake time in her quarters or his bedroom (or Wounded Coast caves or back alleys for that matter), and it didn’t mean that they didn’t actually _sleep_ together in addition to sleeping together, but this arrangement workedfor them.

In a world where so many things didn’t seem to work at all, Hawke took comfort in what he had with Isabela and with all his friends for that matter. Meredith may have named him Champion, but he wouldn’t have survived his years in Kirkwall without the people who supported him.

He heard a door open upstairs and the distant sound of Anders’ laugh in response to some barely-heard rumble from Fenris.

Hawke smiled, listening to the creak of the back stairs as Anders headed down to the kitchen for a late night snack. His friends supported him, and in turn he supported them, although supporting Anders’ appetite was enough to ensure that Hawke would never sit back and rest on his accomplishments if he wanted to avoid being made a pauper.

He laughed softly to himself and leaned forward to stir the coals with a poker. He considered feeding Anders to be fair trade for all the times the man had put his guts back where they belonged, especially after what the Arishok had done to him. Anders’ arrival on the day of the Qunari attack had been nothing short of miraculous.

He leaned back and closed his eyes, letting himself think of the things that did go right, and especially thinking of Isabela. There was something there with her. Something good. Something—

A solid weight landed in his lap, jolting him up with a gasp even as his hand closed on the hilt of the dagger he kept stuffed down in the chair’s cushions.

Anders’ cat meowed at him and dug claws into Hawke’s leg.

“You furry little bast—” Hawke caught himself and shot a look toward the open door. Anders positively doted on this cat, and in addition to being a smashing healer, he was quite capable of tossing a lethal fireball or two, given the right provocation. “Bas, that is. You furry little bas.”

He tried to move the cat off his lap, but he only clawed in harder until Hawke cursed under his breath and stopped trying. “Fine. What do you want?”

Ser Pounce-a-lot meowed at him and stretched up to butt his head under Hawke’s chin. With Brutal that would mean… no, he had no clue, Brutal didn’t do this because Hawke would be knocked flat on his arse if he tried.

“Why don’t you go sit on Brutal?” Hawke asked, but the cat only butted its head under his chin again until he sighed and scratched the top of its head the way Anders did.

Satisfied, the cat settled down on Hawke’s lap and began to purr. When he tried to stop the scratching, Ser Pounce-a-lot dug his claws in again until Hawke resumed.

“Did they kick you out?” Hawke asked, getting an irritable _murr_ in response. “If you’re like this while they’re trying to…” Hawke paused; he was no prude or there would be no way he could keep up with Isabela, but he just didn’t talk sex with animals. He was the kind of man who always sent Brutal out of the room when he and Isabela were about to do things that involved even fewer clothes than usual. Pets were just too much like children, and with Isabela’s stance on having little mage children with him, pets might be the only children he ever had.

“Listen,” he said, deciding to treat the cat as though he were as smart as Brutal.

Which begged the troubling question of whether they should deal Ser Pounce-a-lot in on diamondback night, but that was a tangent he could put aside for the moment.

“Listen,” he said again. “When two – or more, I’ve heard some of Anders’ stories – people take off their clothes, that’s the time for you to be putting your claws away and sleeping under the bed or leaving the room. They’re busy, do you understand?”

Ser Pounce-a-lot thumped him in the chest with his tail and meowed, sounding so put out that Hawke had to chuckle. He shifted his scratching to the cat’s jaw and smiled when it pushed against his fingers to encourage him.

“Don’t be jealous,” he said, finding that he had adopted the soothing croon he used with Brutal when he was injured or unwell. “Anders will always love you.”

Ser Pounce-a-lot raised his head and pinned Hawke with a stare that said he _knew_ that, but there was an elf in his bed with his Anders and he was _vexed._

Hawke tilted his head and stared back into those luminous eyes. Was that what the cat had “said”? How did he know? He wasn’t a cat person, but pinned under Ser Pounce-a-lot’s unblinking gaze he was certain that he had read the cat’s meaning explicitly.

He shook himself and muttered, “If you were a demon, we’d know, wouldn’t we? I mean Justice and all.”

Ser Pounce-a-lot thumped him in the chest with his tail again and yawned, showing sharp little needle teeth. Obviously Hawke was being an idiot to even wonder, that yawn said.

“Right.” Hawke found himself nonplussed in a way he rarely was. “How about this – on nights when Fenris is staying over, if Isabela’s not here, you can sleep in my room.”

He wasn’t sure what response he expected from the cat. How much could a cat really understand anyway?

Ser Pounce-a-lot jumped off his lap and padded to the door, turning his head to watch until Hawke stood up to see where he was going.

He trotted up the stairs, tail held high, and disappeared into Hawke’s bedroom.

Hawke smoothed his beard with both hands and heard a reproachful chuff from Brutal’s place by fireplace in the main hall.

He shook his head. “You have my word that I’ll never give you a hard time about being cowed by that cat again.” 


	20. Ruminations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** No prompt. It's been 3 1/2 years since my last Ephemera update, so it should come as no surprise that there are no prompts for me to work from.
> 
>  **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place between [Epithymy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/369749) and [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

“Do you ever – I don’t know – feel like punching Sebastian right in the mouth?” 

Fenris didn’t even bother opening his eyes. If he did, he might seem more engaged by this conversational gambit than he wanted to be. He even briefly considered pretending to be asleep, but with Anders straddling his hips, carefully working knots out of his shoulders between the lines of lyrium in his skin, they’d both know it was a lie. Relaxing into that kind of touch took an act of will that he’d never be able to doze off through. 

“No,” he murmured, “I haven’t. I can’t say the same about the man I sleep with.” 

“Funny.” Anders poked him in the small of his back, exactly where he knew there was a ticklish spot. “You wouldn’t.” 

“No,” Fenris conceded immediately as the skin on his back twitched like a cat’s. “I wouldn’t.” 

“Besides, you already did a couple of years ago.” Anders went back to rubbing, always avoiding directly rubbing the lyrium, or even straying too close to the line’s edge. 

It was a courtesy that Fenris still didn’t take for granted. He had never expected to be able to enjoy this kind of touch, never thought that the answer to his sensitivity to contact with the lyrium in his skin was an abomination whose inhabiting spirit could feel the lyrium sing before his fingers even touched it. 

“Mm.” He had to acknowledge that yes, he’d hit Anders in the face, and he wasn’t proud of it, but that had been another time, almost another life. “I didn’t know you then the way I know you now.” 

Anders scoffed, but he leaned down to kiss an unmarked spot on Fenris’ shoulder blade. “You mean as a person, not a mage or abomination?” 

He gave up pretending to be disengaged and twisted to look back over his shoulder at Anders. “Or a follower of the Black Divine?” 

“Look, I don’t wear that anymore.” Anders flicked the leather cord around his neck with one finger. “I wear a key to your bloody house, so I thought we’d worked that out.” 

“Two out of three…” He pushed his hips up, forcing Anders to raise up enough to allow Fenris room to roll over, and wasn’t this a sign of how far they’d come? Here he was, flat on his back with someone sitting on top of him, and he was only somewhat uncomfortable instead of ready to crawl out of his skin. 

“What is your point about Sebastian?” 

Back to the start of this conversation, back to whatever it was that was on Anders’ mind enough to pull him and Justice away from thinking about all the ways the Kirkwall Circle was doing wrong by its mages. 

Come to think of it, there were fewer flashes of Justice the individual than there had been during their trip to Ferelden. Fenris searched Anders’ features, lingering on the dark circles under his eyes and the way the bones stood out more sharply in his face. Kirkwall wasn’t good for Justice, and as Justice flagged, so too did Anders. 

“My point is that sometimes, like when he suggests to Hawke that they should turn me over to the templars – _when I’m standing right there_ – that I just want to punch him in the mouth. Or Andraste’s face, one or the other.” 

His eyes lit with something between malice and mischief. “Or zap Andraste’s face with a lightning bolt. Right in the belt buckle. That’d serve him right.” 

Fenris reached up to grab Anders by the thong around his neck and pull him down into a kiss. 

He had to get him out of Kirkwall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been three years, but lately I've been playing DAI _a lot_ and I've found myself more and more thinking about how Volutions Fenris and Anders would fit in that world. Of course, the letter from the Warden may have pushed those thoughts into overdrive, or maybe it was The Descent that did it. Either way, guess who have been taking up more time in my thoughts lately?


	21. Past Due

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** I want to steal Xenon's tiny bear and I refuse to believe that Thaddeus is gone. 
> 
> **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657). ~~I think.~~

“Anders? Fenris?” 

Anders rolled over and grunted, barely slitting his eyes at the tent flap where Sigrun peered in at him. “Not my watch yet, g’way.” 

Fenris, on the other hand, sat up and reached for his sword. “Trouble?” 

“I…” She glanced back over her shoulder at something before leaning in again. “I don’t know? I think it’s a message for you?” 

That had Anders sitting up in a hurry. That Sigrun wasn’t sure was only a little odd when camped out in the ass end of the Anderfels. He dug down in his bedroll for his boots and pulled them on before he slid out of the cozy nest and out into the bracing (bloody cold) mountain air. 

Fenris grabbed his cloak and together they left the tent to meet the messenger. 

Only… 

“Where’s the message?” He looked around, but there weren’t any strangers in the camp, only Sigrun and Velanna and their quartet of shaggy mountain ponies. Even Ser Pounce-a-lot was back in Amaranthine where he could rest his old bones by a fire instead of being dragged around Thedas with Anders. 

Sigrun gave him a pitying look and pointed down by his feet where a tiny bear was eying Fenris’ bare toes speculatively, as though considering whether they were worth a nip or not. 

Chauncey, Xenon the Antiquarian’s favorite curiosity of the moment raised up on his rear legs, exposing a small scroll on a collar around his neck. The scroll was marked with two sigils – one that looked like a cat and one that looked like a sword. 

“Right…” Anders knelt to get a better look, but it was Fenris who dared to reach out and unbuckle the bear’s collar and unroll the scroll. Together they peered at the message written in a professional scribe’s clear and uniform hand.

_Invoice: Past Due_  
_Items: 1 pr matched cuffs (unique)_  
_Invoice due upon receipt_

The past due amount named under that was enough to have Anders whistle through his teeth while Fenris glared at the page. 

Carefully printed at the bottom of the page in a child’s blocky handwriting was an addendum, **He says don’t make him send Thaddeus to ~~rep–– reppo–– repos––~~ take them back.**


	22. What Goes Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** Anders in the bath (alone or with someone, naughty or not, fluff or tearjerker, pls keep the silly down) 
> 
> **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657). 
> 
> Just a _little_ bit of silly, but it's just a little bit of a ficlet.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling like I’m staying in the ghost of the Crown and Lion and not a real place.”

Fenris cupped water in his palm and dribbled it down Anders’ chest, giving only a noncommittal grunt in response, a low sound that vibrated against Anders’ back where he lay cradled against Fenris in the tub. It was all the answer Anders seemed to need to keep going.

“Maybe it’s because I don’t often get to come back to places I’ve left behind, if you don’t count the Circle. I’ve been here with Dal and the other wardens before Amaranthine fell, I’ve been here with you when we were chained together…” Kristoff had stayed here, and a little bit of Kristoff had come to him with Justice. “And now we’re here again.”

“And tomorrow we’ll go to the Vigil,” Fenris murmured.

He handed Anders a lump of soap. “Tonight I have a few things I’d like to do that we didn’t do last time.”

“Other than take a bath together?” Anders craned his neck to see Fenris’ expression and was rewarded with a hint of a smile.

“Other than take a bath together.” He closed his hands over Ander’s hands and helped him rub the apparently forgotten soap between them. “But you tell that voyeur cat of yours that closed curtains around the bed mean stay out.”


	23. Why Locks Are Only Useful if You LOCK Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** First time someone walks in on Anders and Fenris having sex. 
> 
> **Point in Volutions timeline:** This takes place after [Latibule](http://archiveofourown.org/works/286797%22) and more specifically after [Parapraxis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/217265).

“Hawke?”

Varric leaned against the door frame and studied Hawke’s profile, backlit as it was by the flickering fire in the library fireplace. As an exercise, he tried out adjectives to describe it, already outlining the scene he’d write down later. Striking? Regal? Spooked? Definitely spooked. Nah, he wouldn’t write that down.

“I brought something better than the Antivan brandy you sent Bodahn to fetch. He said you were a little shaken up and might want some company.”

With Isabela out on a smuggling run – strike that, a legitimate test of _The Lover’s Wake_ ’s seaworthiness – Varric had taken it on himself to check on his friend.

He hefted the bottle of West Hills Brandy for Hawke to see. “You wanna talk about it?”

For several long moments Hawke said nothing, then he turned his head, and for the first time Varric could see that half his beard, mustache, an eyebrow, and fringe had been burned away.

“I walked in on Anders and Fenris…” He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I should have knocked.”

He got up to snatch the bottle out of Varric’s hand. “No, I don’t want to talk about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The question of what Hawke saw is now answered over [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4924348). NSFW, as you might imagine.


	24. Allotriophagy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The prompt:** A little prompt. Fenders, allotriophagy or doing something they've both never done before.
> 
> **Point in Volutions timeline:** After [Metanoia](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5128898/chapters/11801087) and before [Mentimutation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/262657).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> n. A depraved appetite; a desire for improper food; having food cravings that are different from the expected or the norm
> 
> If you can't abide "improper food," you'll probably want to skip this.

Fenris thought he might never get used to the way Anders would look at almost anything that wasn’t humanoid, tainted, or a cat as a potential meal. 

Giant rat? Anders would skin it and have it skewered over a fire before anyone else had managed to clean the blood off their blades.

Dragon? Fenris had heard him remark that he appreciated a meal that cooked itself.

He thought Anders might draw the line at fennec, but the first time one of the little foxes blithely trotted into the burst of a fireball thrown at a cluster of bandits, Anders offered the charred remains his apologies and then set about finding the edible parts.

Fenris put up with it, in part because he had put up with worse from Anders, in part because he loved the fool man, and in part because the other wardens told him that appetite was one of the side effects of the Joining. Considering the stamina that was also a side effect, Fenris tried to convince himself it was a tolerable balance.

But the day that he saw Anders squat by the remains of a giant spider with a speculative look in his eye, he didn’t think twice about slinging the mage over his shoulder to carry him back to the camp and their trail rations.


End file.
